A couple who fight for unearthing corruption, An evil which is ready to go any extend to attain their goal & A dedicated and responsible passenger who don’t run away from the responsibility – Renjith Shankar’s Passenger is a complete thriller which hooks you from the beginning till theend.
Nandan Menon (Dileep) is an advocate who helps social causes. His newly wedded wife Anuradha (Mamta Mohandas) works in a TV Channelas news reporter. A foreign company gets permission for digging sands from the sea shore and the villagers in the fisherman colony is all united to fight the permission. The issue is much alive in media with the allegation that one of the activists (SonaNair) has been raped by the minister (JagathySreekumar). Anuradha is interviewing the minister and a live chat with the activists too aired. The minister is not happy with all these proceedings, still he maintains his calm. Anuradha got news that the delegates from the foreign company are therefor discussion with the minister and spy on the meeting through a web cam and was shocked of the plans drawn by the foreign company with the minister. However, before ending the discussion, they found out that the web cam was on and it was Anuradha behind that. Sathyanathan (Sreenivasan, the hero) was a regular passenger in train but overslept and missed the station. He meets Nandan Menon in the train and inbetween they exchanged some happy conversation which made them friends. They both get down in the same station. It was the same night where Anuradha was spying on the minister. Watch the thriller on screen. It is really interesting!
Renjith Shankar, who dedicated the film the Lal Jose did an excellent job. Since he is the writer of the story, screen play and dialogues the appreciation should be multiplied. The storyline is simple and thin. In th wrong hands the same subject would have gone unnoticed. Ranjith Shankar knew how he wish to proceed and did what he intended in style. The beautifully knitted screen play was the best part of the film and the director built the characters nicely and maintained the grip. The characterization of the film did worth a special mention, where all characters were from real life and behaving very normally. Let it be the minister, the social activists, the taxi driver or the passenger, all are limited to their roles and the suspense become the leading point. Great work!
The major plus of ‘Passenger’ is unbiased intrusion to the social life. The ‘Karimanal protest’, ‘sexual allegations against ministers’, ‘arresting ofgoons from various places’ – we can see a lot of incidents which we receive from media on a day to day basis. Family life too is discussed, but mainly in its response to the changes with the development to the electronic era. Reality shows, serials, mobiles, computers we can see it all which now take the centre stage of our family halls. From children to grand parents, all are addicted to the new electronicorder. USBs, converting data, charging of mobiles, spying through web cam…the presence of communication equipments and our easy adaptation to it is easily visible. The doubt individuals carry while meeting other passengers, the worries of a taxi driver when he is been called for a long journey…the strained interpersonal relation in a violent social order is pictured but thankfully without much preaching.
Sreenivasan did his role convincingly, delivering exactly what we expect from him. Dileep on the other hand limited his performance to suit the character and this helped a lot in making the passenger as the hero. Good work and attitude there by Dileep. Mamta Mohandas who so far failed to make her presence felt in Malayalam film industry rocks in passanger! Contributions from Nedumudi Venu, Jagathy Sreekumar & Sona Nair are well noted. Anand Swamy as ‘Anali Shaji’ was superb!! The audience felt the terror looking at his eyes and what if there didn’t have a lot of action?!! Othercasts were competent enough to do their roles.
Cinematography by P Sukumar was good enough. The editing was very good, except for somescenes before interval which left the audience a bit of out of hook. (I am not sure whether a partial blame should go to the director.) Back ground Music was very good. Action scenes could havebeen better.
Overall, the movie is a welcome relief. If the movie is playing near your stay, don’t miss the chance. Good work RanjithShankar! We now have a new director tokeep our hopes on.